Ethnic Composition and Migration Status of Primary and Secondary School Students in Russia Alexandrov D., Ivaniushina V., Kazartseva E. Daniil Alexandrov er small. In Saint Petersburg, Pskov and Received in Candidate of Sciences in Biology, Head, Tomsk there are 63–66% locals among February 2015 Laboratory of Sociology in Education children speaking Russian as their first and Science, National Research Univer- language, whereas in Moscow suburbs sity—Higher School of Economics (Saint area there are 44% only. Among ethnic Petersburg). Email: [email protected] minorities, the highest numbers of lo- Valeria Ivaniushina cals are in Tomsk and Pskov (38–39%). Candidate of Sciences in Biology, Lead- In Saint Petersburg there are more lo- ing Research Fellow, Laboratory of Soci- cals or second generation migrants ology in Education and Science, Nation- among Ukrainians, Belarusians and Ta- al Research University—Higher School tars, whereas “generation 1.5” migrants of Economics (Saint Petersburg). E-mail: prevail in number among Tadzhiks and [email protected] Uzbeks (46–49%). Generation 1.5 mi- Ekaterina Kazartseva grants prevail among all ethnic groups Candidate of Sciences in Sociology, in Moscow suburbs area with Uzbeks Junior Researcher, Laboratory of Soci- and Tadzhiks being the most prevailing ology in Education and Science, Nation- (62%). In Tomsk, most of the ethnic mi- al Research University—Higher School norities’ representatives are either locals of Economics (Saint Petersburg). Email: or second-generation migrants. Statistics [email protected] on ethnic and migration status of school students allows for assessment not only Address: 16 Soyuza Pechatnikov str., of the scale of migration flows but also 190008, Saint Petersburg, Russian Fed- of a retrospective time dynamics for vari- eration. ous ethnic groups. Families from Ukraine, Abstract. Data on ethnic diversity and Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia were ethnicity/migration correlation among actively moving to Russia 15–20 years primary and secondary school students ago. Now there is massive migration go- is presented in the article for the first time ing on among Tadzhiks, Uzbeks and Kyr- ever. The study is based on polls held gyz who bring their children of various among 21,320 school students in 365 ages. We believe that education manage- schools of five regions of Russia (Mos- ment authorities should initiate prudent cow Oblast, Saint Petersburg, Leningrad integration of school students with Rus- Oblast, Tomsk, and Pskov). The most part sian as their second language irrelevant of students speaking Russian as their of their citizenship but with consideration second language attend schools of Mos- of their families’ migration background. cow suburbs area (16%) with the least Keywords: schools, ethnic composi- part attending schools of small towns and tion, migrant children, migration status, settlements of Leningrad Oblast (6.6%) migration generations, ethnicity. and Pskov (8.5%). The sample covers 56 ethnic groups with some being rath- DOI: 10.17323/1814-9545-2015-2-173-195 http://vo.hse.ru/en/ EDUCATION STATISTICS AND SOCIOLOGY Migration processes shape new multi-ethnic communities around the world, and Russia is no exception. Unlike Western Europe, which faced mass labor migration as early as in the 1960s‑1970s, it was not until the Soviet Union collapsed that Russia came to know cross-bor- der migration as an important phenomenon. Ethnic composition of Russian cities and towns has been changing visibly since the early 1990s [Vishnevsky, Gimpelson, 2013; Vishnevsky, 2014]. The number of immigrant workers with temporary residence per- mits is increasing mostly in major industry clusters offering a wide variety of jobs, with enterprises interested in exploiting cheap labor force. The process is characterized by the growing migration flow from former Soviet republics (CIS countries) and the intensifying mobility within Russia [Karachurina, Mkrtchyan, 2009; Karachuri- na, 2013]. Registering a child in the Russian Federation is associat- ed with certain legal implications for cross-border migrant families [Alexandrov et al., 2012. P. 18–19], however many immigrants bring their families along. According to Yuliya Florinskaya, immigrant work- ers from Armenia and Azerbaijan bring their children more often than others [2012]. As labor migration flows were increasing, schools in large cities began to accept children who didn’t speak Russian as their first lan- guage; their number was constantly growing through the 1990s—ear- ly 2000s. They have been a source of concerns for the best part of so- ciety, especially for parents of school-age children, which has been widely discussed my mass media. Despite the importance of the is- sue, there has been little empirical research devoted to adaptation of children from immigrant families to Russian school environment, although the number of studies increases every year. The main fo- cus of such research is on how immigrant children adjust to new sur- roundings and integrate into school, on xenophobia and tolerance among peers, on challenges non-native school students deal with in learning, and on relevant teacher policies [Tyuryukanova, Ledenyova, 2005; Panova, Fyodorova, 2006; Barazgova, Vandyshev, Likhachyo- va, 2010; Makarov, 2010; Kashpur, Popravko, 2012; Mukomel, 2014]. Researchers usually work with small samples or school case stud- ies, so there is no detailed picture of ethnic composition at schools of any region or even city. We only managed to find one publication on the e-library portal which is based on a large representative sam- ple of schools and provides data on the number and ethnic compo- sition of students—the study of schools in the Khanty‑Mansi Auton- omous Okrug [Zborovsky, Shuklina, 2013]. Collecting data on the representativeness of certain ethnic groups at schools is a real challenge. Federal Migration Service authorities collecting statistics on arriving and departing migrants do not keep a separate record of children. Education committees are interested in this information and some of them try to have subordinate schools keep a count of non-Russian speaking children, but this data is frag- Voprosy obrazovaniya / Educational Studies. Moscow. 2015. No 2. P. 173-195 Alexandrov D., Ivaniushina V., Kazartseva E. Ethnic Composition and Migration Status of Primary and Secondary School Students in Russia mentary, unclassified, nontransparent and thus can’t be used for re- search analysis. As for schools, they use most diverse classification criteria to keep a record of immigrant children: students with tempo- rary residence permits, students with no Russian citizenship, non-na- tive Russian speakers, etc., which also doesn’t make it easier to con- solidate the information. As soon as neither national nor departmental statistics have ac- cess to information we needed for our analysis, we used the data from student surveys. A detailed description of the research methods and questionnaire items is given in the section that follows. Since 2010, the Laboratory of Sociology in Education and Science of Empirical basis St. Petersburg branch of the National Research University—Higher School of Economics (NRU HSE) has been conducting large-scale studies of Russian schools1 devoted to social differentiation and eth- nic segregation, school social environment and immigrant integra- tion, emotional well-being of students, student socialization through extracurricular activities, etc. All the surveys have used large repre- sentative samples of schools. Although the tool (questionnaire) had different objectives in each project, it always included a sociodemographic module asking about education, occupation, and mother tongue of each parent, places of birth of the student and his/her parents, and how long ago the family moved to the locality. Students were also asked questions about their mother tongue, home language, and the ethnicity/nationality they associated themselves with (ethnic self‑identification). A kit of ques- tions like that allows for setting diverse variables to describe student ethnicity and family migration history. These studies allowed us to accumulate a vast empirical data- base (365 schools in various regions of the Russian Federation, over 20,000 student questionnaires) in 2010–2013. Analysis of this data- base sheds light on the ethnic composition of Russian schools and on migration history of immigrant families in a specific region. Below we describe the sample, its scope, and the sampling meth- od for each project. All surveys used general questioning techniques, i. e. covered all ninth-graders (plus eighth-graders and tenth-grad- ers in some studies). The average age of respondents was 15 years. 1. The 2010 survey of St. Petersburg multi-ethnic schools. During sampling, all city schools were divided into general schools and 1 The studies were conducted with the assistance of the NRU HSE Program of Fundamental Studies (2010–2012 grants) and as part of the 2020 Strategy program (project “Analyzing and Assessing the Potential Role Supplemen- tary and Informal Educational Institutions Can Play in Solving Children So- cialization Issues”). http://vo.hse.ru/en/ EDUCATION STATISTICS AND SOCIOLOGY higher status schools including gymnasia, lyceums, and specialized schools. There are 732 public schools in the city, which made the total population. Sampling was performed in two stages. The first one used the stratified sampling technique: 30 general schools and 10 high- er status schools were selected